Debts that would have waited indefinitely during the idiot’s apparent prosperity now began to press him, suits in law piled up costs against him, and he walked the streets without employment, and thought on and on and on. His friends said he had lost his position because he had used money that did not belong to him; his enemies said he was a thief.
His wife became prematurely old, slovenly and hopeless; the children ragged and tough; the idiot himself struck odd jobs now and again, but being unable any longer to hold up his head over a clean collar and shirt, on account of his thoughts, he never recovered his lost faith in himself. He drove a grocery wagon for two years at $9.50 per week and then died,—his wife said of a broken heart. The wife soon followed the idiot, and now his children are stablemen, cooks, waitresses and things like that.
Moral:—Don’t be an idiot and think, just saw wood and keep up with the procession.
The Game is worth while to the wise, the fool alone crieth out that it is not worth the candle.
THE BALLAD OF PARLIAMENT HILL
He did not wear a uniform,
(We haven’t come to that)
But he wore a tired expression,